And he didn’t craft Shudderwock, the only card which would probably be hit with nerfs, if Blizzard nerfs this deck…

You just learned a tough lesson: when you start crafting a deck, you start with its key pieces, with the irreplaceable cards. This deck’s win condition is Shudderwock. You really need him. So if you can’t craft him now, opt for a different deck. Many of the cards here would be interesting in a Shaman Elemental Deck. Check the budget option in this site.

I believe this card fits into any Mage archetype except for Odd Mage. You don’t need Secret synergies in order to discover a Secret that can be useful to very useful in the situation of the game. I’m pretty sure it will see play, I don’t know if as much as Arcanologist, but keep an eye on the card!

No Houndmaster?

I never opened a Cataclysm in KnC packs and I’m not going to spend dust in it now… Especially since even with Malchezaar’s Imp the Warlock Quest has always had an abysmal win rate. The only time it has shined is with Xol in Dungeon Run, basically because you have a hero Power that replenishes your hand with OP spells, and well, you also have 70 health, so Nether Portal gets a lot of value out before you’re dead. I feel Blizzard has totally missed the spot with the discard mechanic. For it to be viable you should have some control on what you discard. Obviously not a total control because that would be OP. But something like “discard your lowest-cost card”. Or, “discard a card. Minions have preference on the discard”. Something like that. At least you would KNOW what you’re discarding. I also had a Clutchmother Zavas before, and it’s so irritating for it to dodge discards. Not to mention that Silverware Golem is way better, since it gives you tempo, and Zavas is only good if it’s a 2-mana 6/6. 400 dust I don’t regret getting.

I recently opened Warlock Quest from Un’Goro packs, and it’s the only quest I have. Feels VERY bad, man.

Quick!! All of you abuse your 20-mana Molten Giants before they rotate to Wild!

Yeah the new 1 mana sacrifice spell is obnoxious, like if Blizzard are unaware of the obvious synergies. Still, Dark Pact being 2-mana would be a big difference. It means no extra 8-health to face until a turn later. So even if Lackey gets activated, I can still silence the Void Daddy and push face damage, probably getting lethal next turn. I know what I’m talking about since I played the old midrange-style Hunter quite a lot on ladder, and despite having Silences around, I almost never could kill the Warlock because of all its annoying healings.

Cubelock has warped the meta. Sure, it doesn’t have a 75% win-rate, but you know why? Because all decks on the ladder are built to counter it (or, better said, need to have cards to fight against it, like Silence), and it STILL has a positive win-rate. It’s so bad that Paladin does well on ladder by farming the decks meant to counter Cubelock (and also because it has Call to Arms, which is as busted as the Cubelock synergies). It’s the same story as Patches pre-nerf: people teched in Golakka Crawlers and they always got value. Call it Tier 1 if you prefer, but it’s the deck that dictates the meta since the nerfs, and in a heavy way.

The best way to deal with Cubelock was with the nerfs we saw in February. A timely nerf on Dark Pact, making it 2-mana, would have already made a good difference in dealing with Cubelock. I’m afraid that all the enthusiasm of the new expansion and getting rid of the plagues of Mean Streets of Gadgetzan will be very quickly nullified when we see Cubelock being the Tier 0 deck, once again. I hope Blizzard acts promptly and nerfs some of its pieces, or we will risk seeing Druidstone of KFT once again, just in a different class and with other broken card synergies.

If you include Eater of Secrets in Wild, you’re targeting Secret Paladin or Secret Mage. Against THOSE specific decks, yes, EoS is better. But against ALL THE OTHER decks that don’t include secrets, Chief Inspector is better. So no, it’s not worse on average than Eater of Secrets. Can definitely find a place in Aggro/Midrange decks that want to put minion pressure and still have tech against secrets. Besides, you never know when a new Secret deck will rise in the meta in the following two years, so we DO need a Secret tech, and this IS a good one.

Voodoo Doctor will always be better than this in a vacuum. And Voodoo Doctor is not played. This should never be included in a deck, but it’s meant to boost DK Rexxar’s viability.

“Clears the board against aggro or dude” I think is an overstatement. If Paladin has 3 one health minions on board when you play this, the chance of completely clearing the board is less than 50%. Sometimes it will only kill one dude. Versatility is good, if you can control it. I still don’t think this is good enough, but sure, maybe I’m wrong.

Yep, I’m not doubting that some of the cards that will now feel underwhelming might become good or staples in the future. It’s happened frequently. Kind of like how e.g. YShaarj was considered the weakest of the Old Gods and then Barnes was printed and suddenly YShaarj was super powerful.

I don’t know if it’s better. Obviously being able to deal damage to damaged minions is an advantage, but on your next turn you have one less mana, so that’s a disadvantage. I think both cards are on an equal power level.

I don’t know which of those is better, to be honest. They’re not bad cards, it’s just that Warlock has other, more aggressive options. In Arena I’d probably also go for Blood Imp, since AOEs are also not that common. But having 1 attack can make the difference in many situations.

I mean, sure, tutoring cards CAN be quite powerful. The problem I see with this one is that Elemental packages usually need a bunch of elementals to be effective, so it’s very unreliable which elemental you will draw. If it’s only 1 or 2 Elementals what you want to draw, then this naturally gets stronger, but it also risks drawing the Elementals before you draw this, and thus becomes a very bad Gnomish Inventor after that. There would have to be an Elemental in the power level of Ice Block for this to see consistent play, since even with only Ice Block in your deck it was already worth it to run Arcanologist. And Arcanologist had vanilla stats… So far there is no Elemental in that power level, so I can’t see this being good at all, for now…

I probably started playing after that happened, because I’ve never seen the Kobold guy, not even in Casual. I don’t know why Blizzard insists in the same iterations of bad minions instead of printing something new. Like the unicorn that only you could target with spells. It ended up being a terrible minion, but at least it was a new concept. Bad Spell Damage minions and 0-attack Taunts keep on being printed, and they’re pack fillers and waste of cards.

Normally I would say that if Hunter reaches the end game without lethal in sight, he has lost the game. But Blizzard is trying hard to make Late-game Hunter a thing, right? We’ll see…

Yes, I meant Ice Lance, sorry. 🙂